Courtyard House: Home Alone

His spiritual power spread outwards like a spider web, and the door to the main room was gently pushed open a crack from the outside.

Under the moonlight, a figure darted in, moving as lightly as a cat. Lin Yifan frowned slightly, recognizing the figure: it was Wenxiu. What was this girl doing sneaking into his room in the middle of the night instead of sleeping?

He didn't say anything, but focused his mental energy on her. He saw Wenxiu tiptoe to his bedside, and gently take off her cotton-padded jacket and trousers, revealing a thin, moon-white undergarment.

The winter night was chilly, and she shivered slightly, but she still bit her lip and carefully folded the clothes she had taken off and placed them on the chair next to her.

Lin Yifan kept his eyes closed, his breathing steady as usual, but a strange feeling arose in his heart. This girl had been with him for more than half a year, and had always been well-behaved and obedient. What was she up to tonight?

Wenxiu stood by the kang (a heated brick bed) for a long time, the moonlight shining on her slightly trembling shoulders. She seemed to be making some kind of decision, her fingers clenching the hem of her clothes until her knuckles turned white. Finally, she gently lifted the corner of the quilt and slipped in, bringing a chill with her.

Lin Yifan's body stiffened slightly.

Wenxiu clearly noticed, her movements halting, her voice barely a whisper: "Young...Young Master...Are you awake?"

"Um."

He opened his eyes and turned to look at her. In the moonlight, the girl's face was as red as a ripe persimmon, but her eyes were slightly red, as if she had been crying.

"What's up?"

Wenxiu lowered her head, her long hair spread out on the pillow, carrying the fresh scent of soap. She remained silent for a long while before finally speaking in a muffled voice, "Young Master is leaving tomorrow... to Tianjin, to such a far place."

"so?"

"So..." She looked up, tears finally rolling down her cheeks, "So I wanted to sleep with you tonight... They were all supposed to come, but... I was afraid it would disturb your rest, so..."

She couldn't continue and buried her face in the blanket.

Lin Yifan was both amused and exasperated. His body was that of a child under ten years old. What was this girl thinking?

He propped himself up and, by the moonlight, examined Wenxiu's tear-streaked face. More than half a year ago, when he came from the Tang residence, this girl was as thin as a bean sprout, but now she had gained some weight and her body had developed quite a bit; after all, she was already seventeen.

But in the end, he's still a minor. Besides, his body is only eight years old. Although he grows faster than the average person, ...

"Sister Wenxiu," he emphasized the word "sister," "put your clothes on first, then we can talk properly."

Wenxiu acted as if she hadn't heard him, and instead snuggled closer to him, pressing her cool body against him and carefully wrapping her arms around his waist.

Lin Yifan froze. In his more than twenty years of life as a playboy in his previous life, what kind of girls and women hadn't he experienced? Now, being held by a teenage girl like this, he didn't know what to do for a moment.

"Young master, please don't send me away."

Wenxiu's voice was muffled under the covers, thick with a nasal tone, "I'll just hold you for one night. Tomorrow you'll leave, and I... I won't be able to sleep."

Lin Yifan was silent for a moment, then reached out and pulled the blanket over them, wrapping them tightly together. Wenxiu's body was indeed cold; through her thin undergarment, he could feel her shivering slightly. In the winter nights of Beiping, a room without heating was almost like an icebox.

"Are you afraid I won't be able to come back?" he asked.

Wenxiu didn't say anything, but just hugged him tighter.

Lin Yifan sighed. For the past six months, he had been running around, and climbing over walls and ridges at night was a common occurrence for him. Although Wenxiu and the others didn't ask, they weren't blind.

"I promise you."

He softened his tone, a rare occurrence, "I'll definitely be back in five days at most. Besides, Tianjin is a concession; the Japanese won't dare to cause trouble. And with Uncle Chen with me, and Xu Zheng and the others providing advance support, nothing will go wrong."

Wenxiu raised her head; her eyes, still red in the moonlight, shone with an astonishing brightness: "Young master, don't lie to me. My father once said that in this world, the safest places are often where man-eating wolves lurk."

Lin Yifan was taken aback. He had forgotten that Wen Xiuyuan was originally the daughter of a poor family. Her father was an accountant who was killed by a stray bullet when the Japanese entered the city. Her mother took her to Beiping to escape the war, but they didn't survive that winter, leaving her alone to be sold into the Tang family. This girl seemed docile, but deep down she had already seen life and death.

"Your father is right."

He reached out and tucked the blanket around Wenxiu. "That's why I didn't take you with me; I was afraid we wouldn't be able to manage. Old Chen is an old hand, and Xu Zheng and his men are from the Military Intelligence Bureau. I'm going there to discuss business, not to risk my life."

Wenxiu stared at him for a long time, as if trying to discern how much truth was in his words. Finally, she softly hummed in agreement, pressed her face against his shoulder, and her breathing gradually calmed down.

Lin Yifan lay on his back, listening to the howling of the north wind whistling through the locust tree branches outside the window. Wenxiu's body slowly warmed up, but the arms wrapped around his waist never loosened.

He recalled those nights of revelry in his past life, when he was never short of beautiful women around him, but none of them had ever made him feel like he was simply trying to confirm that he was still alive.

"Young Master," Wenxiu suddenly spoke, his voice already tinged with weariness, "do you know why I insisted on coming?"

Why?

"That girl Xia Yan, when she went to buy beef this afternoon, heard from Manager Wang that three bodies had just been pulled from the Tianjin docks last week; they were all out-of-town businessmen. Her hands were shaking as she told her."

Lin Yifan's eyes narrowed slightly. The Tianjin Concession was a melting pot of all sorts of people, including the Green Gang, the Japanese, the British, and the French, with various factions deeply entrenched in their power. Whether Manager Zhou of Hongjitang was reliable was still uncertain.

But what does it matter? I have the system to rely on. If I can cross the sea now, I'd dare to storm even the Japanese imperial palace and escape unscathed.

However, I can't tell anyone about these things.

"So you're scared?"

"I'm scared."

Wenxiu's voice softened, "But I'm even more afraid that you don't know fear. You're still a child, but you're always like this, bearing everything on your own, never telling us anything. The three of us depend on you to survive. If something happens to you, what... what will we do?"

Lin Yifan fell silent. Moonlight streamed in through the gaps in the window paper, gilding Wenxiu's hair with a silvery edge.

He suddenly realized that for the past six months, he had indeed treated these three girls as possessions—arranging their food and lodging, teaching them how to use guns, but never really thinking about what they were afraid of.

"Sister Wenxiu," he called out this time with much more naturalness, "I promise you, I'll take you with me whenever I can when I go out in the future. But not this time. The situation in Tianjin is unclear, and I need to scout it out first."

Wenxiu raised her head, her eyes still red, but she curved her lips into a smile: "Does young master keep his word?"

"I keep my word."

"Then..." she shrank deeper into the blankets, her voice barely audible, "Can I hold you while we sleep tonight? Just for one night."

Looking at her cautious demeanor, Lin Yifan suddenly recalled a stray cat he had raised in his previous life. When he first took it in, it was just like that, wanting to get close to him but afraid of being disliked, only daring to secretly jump onto the headboard at night and curl up into a small ball.

"Okay." He turned around, put his arm around her waist, and patted her gently like he was soothing a child. "Go to sleep, we have to get up early tomorrow."